Textual/Technical: Two Games On The Page

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Links for two different games arrived in my inbox recently, both of which use the printed page as a backdrop. In the case of super-hectic shooter Scraap (above), it’s simply a page of text for the background, but in the case of Fig.8 – a browser game on Yo! Arcade – you are piloting a bicycle through a printed technical drawing, and the type is the obstacle. Scraap is a simple scrolling shooter of the most derivative kind presented in a fresh way, while Fig.8 is a beautiful concept, and it captures that oddly dry abstraction of technical drawings in being rather dry and placid. Both games end up being a little infuriating, but it’s fun to see designers playing around with different art-styles in this manner.

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Fig. 8 is oddly calming, and feels kind of like a Pixar credit sequence, until the inevitable increase in complexity and shameful only-know-which-way-to-turn-by-trial-and-error level design combine with the widely spaced checkpoints to turn it into frustration.

(Tip: shift-steering won’t affect your multiplier. You can reach the first non-tutorial checkpoint by entirely this mechanism. Since you’ll then crash soonafter and zero your score, however…)

Fig.8 is quite interesting. I’d probably like it more if it would allow the player to ride around more freely. It feels a bit too confining through the forced camera motion which contrasts with the overall atmosphere of the game.